Field: Asteroids

Now that falling launch costs are making space more accessible, hundreds of groups are looking for ways to make money off-world.

NASA and ESA have updated their odds of 2023 DW, an asteroid the size of an Olympic swimming pool, hitting Earth in 2046.

NASA has added a tenth asteroid flyby to the record-breaking Lucy mission so that it can test a new asteroid-tracking system.

By analyzing just three dust particles, researchers learned that the rubble pile asteroid Itokawa is 4.2 billion years old and hard to kill.

2023 will see the launch of new rockets, the return of OSIRIS-REx, and a mission to Jupiter that could help us find extraterrestrial life.

NASA has announced plans to launch the world’s first asteroid-hunting spacecraft — the $1.2 billion NEO Surveyor — in 2028.

3.4 billion years ago, an asteroid impact created a megatsunami on Mars that extended for 1500 kilometers. Here's the fascinating story.

Space advertising could generate a profit, even though space ads would cost $65 million each, according to Russian researchers’ calculations.

In 2024, the LSST Camera will begin a 10-year-long survey of space that could revolutionize astronomy — if LEOsats don’t get in the way.

NASA has confirmed that its DART spacecraft altered the orbit of the Dimorphos asteroid — a huge win for planetary defense efforts.

NASA's planetary defense researchers are tracking potentially hazardous objects in space and developing tech to destroy or deflect them.

DART collision images captured by NASA's Hubble and James Webb space telescopes show what happens when a spacecraft slams into an asteroid.

NASA has slammed its DART spacecraft into an asteroid in the world’s first demonstration of planetary defense technology.

The DART spacecraft is now close enough to image the asteroid system it plans to slam into as part of NASA’s planetary defense efforts.

It wasn’t until landing on the asteroid Bennu that NASA learned its surface was more like a plastic ball pit than the relatively solid moon.

Asteroid strikes, supernova explosions, and gamma-ray bursts are just a few of the ways the cosmos can kill us.

A crater 5 inches deep was caused by something about the size and weight of an eraser on the end of a pencil.

The asteroid that caused the last mass extinction 65 million years ago was only 5 kilometers across — tiny compared to this one.

To help protect Earth from potentially hazardous asteroids, astronomers developed an algorithm to look for them in existing datasets.

As part of its new planetary defense strategy, the China National Space Administration is going to launch a mission to redirect an asteroid.

NASA successfully pinpointed almost exactly where and when a new asteroid would hit Earth’s atmosphere, before it made contact.

Cosmic bodies, like asteroids and comets, are constantly zooming through space and often crash into our planet.

A near-Earth asteroid discovered in 2016 may have once been part of the moon — making it unlike any space rock we’ve ever discovered.

To prevent asteroid impacts, UCSB physicists suggest we slice up the space rocks using arrays of “penetrator rods.”

Blowing up an asteroid heading to Earth with a nuclear bomb could save the planet, according to new planetary defense simulations.

Astronomers have discovered an asteroid that orbits the sun in just 113 days, making it the fastest-orbiting asteroid in our solar system.

Using data from the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, NASA has updated its predictions about the Bennu asteroid impacting Earth.

The first high-res heat emissions map of the Psyche asteroid suggests the hunk of metal might not be the core of a developing planet.

NASA is staging a week-long asteroid impact simulation during which participants will need to respond to a hypothetical impact scenario.

JAXA’s Hayabusa2 has successfully returned asteroid samples to Earth. Its next mission? Gather information that could help prevent an asteroid impact.

Using a bioreactor packed with bacteria could make space mining more efficient by speeding up the extraction of elements from rock.

NASA has collected samples from the asteroid Bennu that could yield insights into everything from the origin of life to avoiding an asteroid impact on Earth.

MIT has developed a simulation to determine the most appropriate way to stop an asteroid impact if one of the space rocks is headed toward the Earth.

Billions spent on projects of questionable benefit - like the plan to capture an asteroid - raises the question:...